I have still to say a few words on the Competition of labourer with labourer,—a subject which in these days has given rise to so much sentimental declamation. But have we not already exhausted this subject? I have shown that, owing to the action of Competition, men cannot long receive an exceptional remuneration for the co-operation of natural forces, for their acquaintance with new processes, or for the possession of instruments by means of which they avail themselves of these forces. This proves that efforts have a tendency to be exchanged on a footing of equality, or, in other words, that value tends to become proportionate to labour. Then I do not see what can justly be termed the Competition of labourers; still less do I see how it can injure their condition, since in this point of view workmen are themselves the consumers. The working class means everybody, and it is precisely this vast community which reaps ultimately the benefits of Competition, and all the advantage of values successively annihilated by progress.
The evolution is this: Services are exchanged against services, values against values. When a man (or a class) appropriates a natural agent or a new process, his demands are regulated, not by the labour which he undergoes, but by the labour which he saves to others. He presses his exactions to the extreme limit, without ever being able to injure the condition of others. He sets the greatest possible value on his services. But gradually, by the operation of Competition, this value tends to become proportioned to the labour performed; so that the evolution is brought to a conclusion when equal labour is exchanged for equal labour, both serving as the vehicle of an ever-increasing amount of gratuitous utility, to the benefit of the community at large. In such circumstances, to assert that Competition can be injurious to the labourer, would be to fall into a palpable contradiction.
And yet this is constantly asserted, and constantly believed; and why? Because by the word labourer is understood not the great labouring community, but a particular class. You divide the community into two classes. On one side you place all those who are possessed of capital, who live wholly or partly on anterior labour, or by intellectual labour, or the proceeds of taxation; on the other, you place those who have nothing but their hands, who live by wages, or—to use the consecrated expression—the prolétaires. You look to the relative position of these two classes, [p304] and you ask if, in that relative position, the Competition which takes place among those who live by wages is not fatal to them?
The situation of men of this last class, it is said, is essentially precarious. As they receive their wages from day to day, they live from hand to mouth. In the discussion which, under a free régime, precedes every bargain, they cannot wait; they must find work for to-morrow on any terms, under pain of death. If this be not strictly true of them all, it is at least true of many of them, and that is enough to depress the entire class; for those who are the most pressed and the poorest capitulate first, and establish the general rate of wages. The result is, that wages tend to fall to the lowest rate which is compatible with bare subsistence—and in this state of things, the occurrence of the least excess of Competition among the labourers is a veritable calamity, for, as regards them, the question is not one of diminished prosperity, but of simple existence.
Undoubtedly there is much that is true, much that is too true, in fact, in this description. To deny the sufferings and wretchedness of that class of men who bear so material a part in the business of production, would be to shut our eyes to the light of day. It is, in fact, this deplorable condition of a great number of our brethren which forms the subject of what has been justly called the social problem; for although other classes of society are visited also with disquietudes, sufferings, sudden changes of fortune, commercial crises, and economic convulsions, it may nevertheless be said with truth that liberty would be accepted as a solution of the problem, did mere liberty not appear powerless to cure that rankling sore which we denominate Pauperism.
And although it is here, pre-eminently, that the social problem lies, the reader will not expect that I should enter upon it in this place. Its solution, please God, may be the result of the entire work, but it clearly cannot be the result of a single chapter.
I am at present engaged in the exposition of general laws, which I believe to be harmonious; and I trust the reader will now begin to be convinced that these laws exist, and that their action tends towards community, and consequently towards equality. But I have not denied that the action of these laws is profoundly troubled by disturbing causes. If, then, we now encounter inequality as a stubborn fact, how can we be in circumstances to form a judgment regarding it until we have first of all investigated the regular laws of the social order, and the causes which disturb the action of these laws? [p305]
On the other hand, I have ignored neither the existence of evil nor its mission. I have ventured to assert, that free-will having been vouchsafed to man, it is not necessary to confine the term harmony to an aggregate from which evil should be excluded; for free-will implies error, at least possible error, and error is evil. Social harmony, like everything which concerns man, is relative. Evil is a necessary part of the machinery destined to overcome error, ignorance, injustice, by bringing into play two great laws of our nature—responsibility and solidarity.
Now, taking pauperism as an existing fact, are we to impute it to the natural laws which govern the social order,—or to human institutions which act in a sense contrary to these laws,—or, finally, to the people themselves, who are the victims, and who, by their errors and their faults, have brought down this severe chastisement on their own heads?
In other words, does pauperism exist by providential destination,—or, on the contrary, by what remains of the artificial in our political organization,—or as a personal retribution? Fatality, Injustice, Responsibility—to which of these three causes must we attribute this frightful sore?